


I Am the Past, and That is All

by Island_of_Reil



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Gen, Goodbyes, Pre-Canon, Slight Canon Divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-28
Updated: 2015-08-28
Packaged: 2018-04-17 14:28:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4670054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Island_of_Reil/pseuds/Island_of_Reil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He’d spent nearly six years telling Armin the truth about the world, as much of it as was safe to tell a very young boy. He wasn’t going to part from him on a lie.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Am the Past, and That is All

When he was born they named him for a great warrior, a leader whose people were barely remembered when their own people last had a name. A boy who sheltered with the enemy and, under their tutelage, became a man who turned what they’d taught him against them, inflicting upon them their greatest defeat.

This boy would never grow into a tall, broad wielder of sword and shield, Karl had often thought while looking down into the cradle and watching soft, pale brows knit over inquisitive blue eyes while a block or stone turned over and over in the small, chubby hands. No more so than his father, named for yet another great warrior of their forgotten forbears’ forgotten forbears, and as far from physically intimidating as they came. Or, for that matter, his mother’s father, no less slight in build.

It was of little importance. They had begun to hone for him a weapon unlikely to be taken from him in life until the furthest reaches of old age. So much the better for it to be housed in a puny frame and — if he continued to take after his mother — behind a sweet and winsome face.

Now, more than five years later, he could only hope they’d made a good enough job of it and that the old man would live to finish it.

“Dad?”

Karl carefully schooled his face before turning, but he had no illusion that Armin hadn’t sensed the hesitation in him. “Yes, Armin?” he asked calmly.

The brows, still as pale as his mother’s but starting to grow as thick as his grandfather’s, were knitted over troubled blue eyes. “You’re going away,” Armin said simply. “You and Mom.” The words were calm, but a flutter disturbed the smooth skin of his throat.

The guilt jolted through Karl like adrenaline. He made no reply, but his face obviously gave him away, as it always did. Armin’s lower lip twitched, and with a hint of accusation now in his high voice he said, “Your bedroom door wasn’t all-the-way closed. I saw the travel bags on the floor.” He paused, and then continued, his voice beginning to thicken: “You’re going away in the balloon. Aren’t you?”

Sophia could have lied easily, all wide eyes and wider smile. For Karl, it’d have been futile. He knelt and clasped a narrow shoulder in either hand. “Yes, darling,” he said gravely, holding his son’s eyes with his own. “We leave within the half-hour.”

“Y-you won’t take me with you,” Armin whispered, his eyes beginning to glisten. Because Armin knew why they wouldn’t take him with them.

Karl supposed he could reassure him they’d come back. Who knows, maybe they would, he told himself for the thousandth time. The two of them and the old man had spent a year preparing the balloon. It was flightworthy, the gondola large and sturdy enough to carry two adults and a good amount of supplies. Heretical maps, and information passed through the tunnel, would guide them to safety. To civilization not hemmed in by titans, dead or alive.

He’d spent nearly six years telling Armin the truth about the world, as much of it as was safe to tell a very young boy. He wasn’t going to part from him on a lie.

“We can’t,” he said huskily, brushing the back of his hand against one round cheek. “If we can come back to you and Grandfather, we will.”

_If we can._

Armin’s eyes overflowed. He took a great sobbing breath, then another, and his nose began to run. Karl forced himself to breathe deeply and slowly, in and out, mastering himself as Sophia had taught him in their adolescence, and pulled Armin to his chest. 

Within five minutes, the sobs began to subside. Karl fished a faded but clean handkerchief from his trouser pocket and dabbed at Armin’s eyes and then at the wet spot on his own shirt. Then he put the cloth to the boy’s nose. “Blow,” he said, and Armin obeyed with a rheumy honk.

Small, hard soles rang out crisply against the hallway linoleum. Karl didn’t raise his head at the sound, nor at the faint whiff of perfume that preceded Sophia into rooms. Jasmine. No one outside the family had ever asked her what the sweet, intriguing scent was, but Karl had often seen eyes narrow above wrinkling noses as the heretical odor prodded at the gates of memory, then relax as the mindwipe reasserted its control.

Her footfalls stopped about a meter behind them. Karl heard her quiet sigh. When he stood and turned to look at her, her round blue eyes held no recrimination for him. They were flat and weary. His own eyes flicked away before meeting hers again resolutely, then settling on Armin with a sense of defeat.

Sophia dropped to her own knees beside Armin. He threw his arms around her and clung like a limpet. She embraced him, closing her eyes, not speaking. They were still for an eternity, mother and child, but for a quiver of liquid at the ends of her pale lashes. Karl forced himself to breathe deeply and slowly, in and out.

Finally she took Armin by the shoulders and eased him gently backward. He let her do so, though his unwillingness to relinquish her showed in every line of his movement. She took out her own handkerchief, crisper and brighter than Karl’s and scented with jasmine, then dabbed gently at Armin’s newly dampened eyes. “You must be a good brave boy for Grandfather, darling,” she whispered, ignoring the tear sliding down the left side of her own face. “It won’t be long until you’re taller and stronger than he is, and then you’ll look out for him. Yes?”

Armin nodded, casting his eyes down to the floor, as a second of footsteps sounded in the hall.

Armin’s grandfather stood in the entranceway. Under his thick brows, his eyes were as flat and weary as his daughter’s. Karl thought he perceived a trace of red around them, but it might have been a trick of the lamplight.

“The horses are saddled,” the old man said without preamble. “Your travel bags are loaded.”

Sophia’s swallow was audible as she rose. “Papa,” she said, voice heavy and rough in her throat. She moved to him swiftly and embraced him as Armin had her. His arms came around her and he bowed his head into the crook of her neck. Karl wondered if he were committing the scent of jasmine to memory.

She let him go, as reluctantly as Armin had let her go, but of her own volition. The old man looked away from her, toward Karl. Their hands gripped one another, then one another’s forearms, before the old man finally pulled Karl against him with something akin to violence. Karl swallowed and returned the embrace.

The old man pulled away from him, held him at arm’s length by the shoulders. He held his gaze with the eyes of a hawk in a man’s form. “Take care of her,” he said sharply, and Karl would have sworn he was restraining himself from threatening his son-in-law with haunting him in the afterlife he didn’t believe in.

“I— I will,” Karl said, and the old man nodded curtly and looked away.

When he turned again, Sophia was carrying Armin on her hip. Karl moved to her, wound his arms tight about her as she did hers about him, Armin snug between their chests, between their hearts. The boy grabbed blindly at both of them, fingers gripping clothes and the forms beneath them as if all his memory resided in his hands.

As one, slowly and gently, they lowered him to the floor, setting him down on his feet. His arms remained raised, his hands open, for long seconds afterward.

“Goodbye, Armin,” Karl whispered, not completely trusting his voice.

“We’ll send for you, darling,” Sophia said thickly, smiling from ear to ear. “Both of you.”

As they strode down the hallway toward the front door, toward the horses, the last thing they saw was Armin slowly lowering his hands to his side, and his grandfather clapping a steadying hand on his shoulder. Sophia’s hand found Karl’s and squeezed, and he squeezed back, forcing himself to breathe, deeply and slowly, in and out.

In the air, far above the titans, he promised himself, he would weep.

**Author's Note:**

>  _And you are here beside me, small,_  
>  _Contained and fragile, and intent_  
>  _On things that I but half recall—_  
>  _Yet going whither you are bent._  
>  _I am the past, and that is all._  
>  — Yvor Winters, [“At the San Francisco Airport”](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177283) _(“To my daughter, 1954”)_
> 
> In this story, Armin is named for [Arminius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arminius), a warrior of the ancient Germanic tribe called the Cherusci. Per modern historians, Arminius’s victory in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, nine years after the birth of Christ, was the greatest defeat Rome ever suffered. His father, Karl, is named for [Charlemagne/Karl der Grosse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne) (“Charles the Great”).


End file.
